AC Milan came away with three huge points from their encounter with Hellas Verona last night. Santiago Gimenez was decisive for the Rossoneri, but the issues in attack remain and Sergio Conceicao must make changes.
As highlighted by today’s edition of Gazzetta dello Sport (see photo below), despite Verona having conceded the most goals in the league, Milan struggled to create chances. In many ways, they are playing like Alvaro Morata is still at the club.
Gimenez does his job
That is what a centre-forward is for, resolving complicated names by appearing at the right time in front of goal, thus transforming opportunities into goals. Santiago Gimenez is indeed what Milan needed and he confirmed it with the goal against Verona
Of course, Rafael Leao deserves a lot of praise for the goal as well. The Portuguese winger came off the bench for the second half and combined with Alex Jimenez, another sub, to break through the Verona defence.
It was an easy goal for Gimenez, it must be said, but to be in the right place is a different question. Can we be sure that Morata would have been found in the same way? The Mexican sensed the opportunity and was able to free himself from the defence, which requires skill.
As a strong centre-forward, he understood beforehand what would happen. And perhaps Milan should understand some things too, because the victory over the Gialloblu leaves a very valuable lesson.
Attack continues to struggle
For large parts of the game, Conceicao’s team played as if Morata was still in attack and not the Mexican, who guarantees a presence in the area which must be taken advantage of. Indeed, the striker only had two passes to exploit and both were goals, even if the first was offside.
In short, the striker needs vertical balls to attack the depth or crosses to make use of his aerial abilities inside the box. At Feyenoord, the wingers played for him and even the full-backs, when they came forward, looked for him with crosses.
Milan, on the other hand, never knew how to serve him with the right timing and didn’t even try. Conceicao changed the battery of attacking midfielders three times, but no formula was convincing: he started with Musah-Joao-Sottil, switched to Jimenez-Joao-Leao and ended with Pulisic-Joao-Leao.
The ‘Fantastic Four’ were used in the final parts of the game as Verona never really threatened, but Milan still didn’t create enough.
The full-backs didn’t participate enough from behind: Kyle Walker never pushed forward properly and was also replaced for this reason, Theo Hernandez seemed apathetic as so often this season and only Jimenez, who had the lovely dink for Leao, was able to open up the yellow-blue defence.
The difficulty in creating chances against one of the five most beaten defences in Europe was surprising. In the top European leagues, only Leicester and Southampton in the Premier League, Holstein Kiel in the Bundesliga and St.Etienne in Ligue 1 have done worse than Verona.
And yet yesterday, at a certain point, it seemed that the Rossoneri were destined for a disappointing 0-0.
